It was a complex and-particularly at the end-provocative
discussion of far too many issues in too short a time.

Nevertheless, when political theorist Langdon Winner presented his performance
piece, "Introducing the Automatic Professor Machine," in the Student Union
Theatre last week, he did more than satirize the application of information
technology and marketing lingo to education. He provoked discussion of
the relationship between power and technology, the way things are shaking
out at UB and on campuses throughout the country, and how technology is
changing the concept of education itself.

The program was the first in a series of spring
symposia on information technology at UB, sponsored by the Office of the
Vice Provost for Faculty Development.

The presentation was introduced by Provost Thomas
E. Headrick, who said he hoped the series would provoke the faculty to
pursue "pedagogical goals that promote authentic teaching and authentic
learning." He added that the university community must understand and direct
"how new technologies affect our civic culture," but emphasized that no
university "can afford to ignore the benefits of technology without being
rendered obsolete."

Weighing in on one side was Winner, a professor
at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and long-time critic of runaway technology
and its consequences, who presented himself to the UB audience as "a critic
who has now gone over to the other side" to form EduSHAM Corp., a company
that markets educational products and offers "90 Day Limited Warranty on
Knowledge, customized First Name Basis software, lectures and seminars
by only the top-10 minds in every field."

The purpose of this not-so-far-removed-from-reality
company, said Winner, is to drain the bloat from the $600 billion education
industry, level its expensive infrastructure, raze its antiquated guild
approach to pedagogy and get rid of its high-cost, low-production personnel,
including librarians and professors with high wages and cushy lifestyles.

He slipped easily into the persona of Glib Marketing
Manager, whose reductionist approach to cheap, easily obtained and absorbed
intellectual products is cloaked in the Howdy-Doody language ("Wow, Buffalo
Bob!") of infomercials and upbeat, you-can-do-it seminars.

His purpose in coming to UB, Winner claimed, was
to introduce Edu-SHAM's new mechanism for delivering education products
online: the Automatic Professor Machine or APM, "soon to be found in gas
stations, convenience stores, hotel lobbies and other sites all over America."

Flexible, user-friendly, just-in-time pacing, low-cost
(certainly cheaper than most colleges), APM, he said, is the face of education
tomorrow.

Winner's talk produced anxiety in at least some members
of the audience, annoyance in others.

His faux point of view was offset by upbeat and
insistent responses by Voldemar Innus, senior associate vice president
for university services; Deborah Walters, associate professor of computer
science, and Logan Scott, a member of the Baldy Walkway technical-support
staff with more than 20 years of experience in pedagogical applications
of information technology.

On Winner's side of the issue was Henry Steck, SUNY
Distinguished Professor at SUNY-Cortland and UUP statewide vice president
for professionals.

Innus began the response by maintaining that information
technology, or IT, while oversold, "is just a tool, an enabler...a neutral
technology." He acknowledged that IT funding at UB had "been a lightning
rod for all kinds of viewsŠand all kinds of issues we should be talking
about, like quality."

Walters took issue with Winner's satire, claiming
that fear of technology is like "Socrates' reported fear of the written
word.

"Commercialization of education began long ago,"
she said, "and is not the result of technology." She argued with Winner's
supposition that education is a right, and that university research already
is commercialized through patents and other forms of profit privatization.

Walters maintained that the commercialization of
teaching through Web-based software is no different than commercialization
through textbooks, and that if the university does not enhance technological
offerings, students will not attend school here. She made a strong pitch
for computer literacy among faculty, proposing that IT use can improve
collegiality and community on campus through e-mail, newsgroups, listserves,
online assignments and the increased availability of reference materials,
reserved readings and other course materials.

Scott agreed that commodifica-tion already is part
of higher education and that it is unfair to tar IT in education with the
same brush used to lament the deregulation of banks.

Scott disagreed with Innus, however, that technology is
politically neutral. "Any technology can be used to our benefit-in this
case that of the university-but you get the government you deserve," he
said, a reference to what some have called an absence of faculty-staff-student
input in the IT planning stages at UB.

Steck noted that satire takes over where rational
discourse fails, and "were it not for my tears, I would have found it a
lot more amusing.

"Minerva flies at twilight farther over the edge
into a new era than we'd like to think," he said. "...I'm just a Tory socialist,
slow to change, suspicious of change, suspicious of raw individualism in
the marketplace. I value ritual, ceremony, the whole set of rituals we
perform every day in a university-the getting of coffee, the whining and
whinging of faculty to one another.

"Regardless of what others have said here," Steck
maintained, "We are a guild-we are in control of our tools, our product,
our entry into our profession, the validation of the knowledge we pass
on to others."

Moderator Hank Bromley, associate professor of educational
organization, administration and policy, noted that there is much discussion
of technology on the UB campus, but remarkably little attention to the
anxiety, excitement and fear over where it's going and who's making the
decisions.

Stuart Shapiro, chair of the Department of Computer
Science, called IT "a marvelous machine that should not be shoved down
people's throats."

The discussion that ensued arose from issues raised
during the question-and-answer period. These included "corporate process"
and "group-think;" the idea that UB must provide "what business wants;"
control and decision-making within the university; dimensions of social
activity lost when one dimension, such as speed or convenience, is enhanced;
the York University strike over technology issues, and the need for collective
and representative direction of technological innovations at UB.

The next scheduled symposium will be on March 26
at a time and place to be announced. The guest speaker will be William
Graves, founder of the University of North Carolina's Institute for Academic
Technology.